"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting our high technology from WEAPONRY to LIVINGRY."

- Buckminster Fuller (h/t Suzy Waldman)

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Awarding it to Al Gore cannot be seen as anything other than a political statement. Awarding it to the IPCC is well-founded. [Gore's film The Inconvenient Truth has] some very obvious mistakes, like the argument that we're going to see 6m of sea-level rise.

They [the Nobel committee] have a unique platform in getting people's attention on this issue, and I regret they have used it to make a political statement.

Never mind the odd choice of purported error for now.

I am reminded of the scene in the Monty Python film Life of Brian, where the crowd demands of Brian's mum whether she is a virgin, insisting it "isn't a personal question". How, exactly, could a peace prize not be a political statement?